Translation of Rahul Sankrityayan's piece

You can read the translation of this piece of this great Hindi writer and thinker. The Hindi is given in the earlier post. For those who do not know Hindi, they can follow the English and for those, who know both Hindi and English, they can have the extra fun reading both, and for those, who are budding translators, I am sure they would find a lesson or two to learn from here. The translation here is mine and it is © Roomy Naqvy. You are free to distribute it but please recognize me as the translator of this piece.

Note: The Hindi extract was 253 words while my English translation is 316 words. Translation students can understand the expansion from the fact that the Hindi is a literary essay and that it uses one word 'ghumakkad' and 'ghumakkadi' for Travel/Traveler. And it is used as a concept by the writer. It isn't used as a term in common parlance.

And to learn more about this great scholar, Rahul Sankrityayan, please follow this link at Wikipedia and this second link. I don't think this Wikipedia is a very good link but it isn't bad enough for an introduction.

I believe the most important thing in this world to be traveling. There can be no one who would think better for society than a person who travels a lot. Whether the world is steeped in joy or mired in sadness, it only finds refuge in the wisdom of the travelers. Ancient Man was a great traveler. It is necessary to speak of the great contribution to human civilization by the travelers in the modern age because people stole from the writings of the great travelers of history and published their writings in their names, which led to the misconception that only frogs of the well are able to do something worthwhile in this world. Charles Darwin occupies a pivotal place in the growth of modern science. He not only carried out important and unparalleled research in the origin of species and of the human race but it could be said that all sciences had to change their direction in the light of Darwin’s contributions. But would Darwin have succeeded in his mission had he not taken the oath of voyage in his life? It is true that the spirit of travel has led to tremendous massacre in the history of human race and we would not want the travelers to indulge in massacres but it is also a fact that if the caravans of travelers did not go around the world, then the lazy human races would have slept and would not have risen above the animal world. The American continent was rather lifeless for a long time. The ostriches of Asia had forgotten the greatness of the travelers of yore, which is why they did not hoist their flag on the American continent. Till two centuries ago, Australia lay barren. India and China take great pride in their ancient civilizations but they did not enough common sense to go there and hoist their flags.